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Late Monday night I stitched my last backstitch on Mirabelle and breathed a sigh of relief. She was done! Not quite, actually as I still had some beading to do and per instruction I wash and press her in between.

After the last back stitch. She looks a little funny because of the camera’s flash. Hubby was asleep, so I couldn’t light the house up like a Christmas tree.

She immediately took a warm soak in some quilt soap while I watched tv. After that I rinsed her off, hung her up and went to bed.

The next day I ironed her. I don’t know if it’s because I have a cheap iron (I do), no ironing board (I use a cookie sheet covered with dish towels), or just bad technique, but I’m never really happy with how they look after being pressed. There’s a horizontal crease going through the fabric that will not come out. It was there to begin with, and it will be there till the end of time I’m sure. Part of me really wants to invest in one of those clothes steamers to see if that will help alleviate some of the crease marks.

After ironing I carefully sewed pink beads onto her dress trying not to add fresh creases. I’ve read that the glass beads are heat resistant and you can iron them, but I stick to what I’ve learned. After that she really, really was done.

Ta da! She’s finished!

The beads going up her bodice lend so much depth.

The french knots weren’t too bad, but I had trouble determining how many twists to do.

The pattern across the top.

Close Up of her pouty little face.

And this is the kit from bothy threads. I love their kits so much. They’re expensive for us in the US (it’s a British company) but high quality.

And now I’m taking a break. Really. I swear. It took all of my willpower not to pick up one of the kits I have waiting (two more Mirabelle, one Gorjuss) it helps that I can’t decide which I want to do and just keep going. But Xenoblade X released yesterday and I downloaded it for my much neglected Japanese Wii U. I’m going to enjoy exploring that world for a while before I pick up one of my kits. I love cross stitch, but it takes sosomuch time. I think I’m just really slow at it.

So, I hope to be back with some more works in progress in 3-4 weeks if I can hold out that long. Until then, happy stitching!

I stitched like a fiend last week and did indeed finish up the regular cross stitch late Sunday night.

じゃんじゃあああん！She’s done! (ish)

Of course finishing the regular cross stitch doesn’t mean she’s done. And I wouldn’t even let myself sleep after finishing that. I had to immediately start on the backstitch and do some of the vines. I love backstitch. It goes much more quickly than the cross stitch and it’s like instant gratification. It just makes everything pop and look even better.

This is what I ended up stitching Sunday night.

Sorry for the poor lighting. Lamp-lit pictures are’t the best.

Since then I’ve been stitching away. I finished all of the outlining of the vines and flowers and of Mirabelle herself except for a little of her dress on the right that I can’t get to because of the frame. So now I’m left with the designs on the top and bottom. Sound familiar?

Today’s state of completion.

I really love the effect of the silver and black threads, but those designs are challenging and time consuming. There’s no clear linear way to stitch it, so I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity to waste thread going here, there, and everywhere. That’s also going to take me the longest time to complete. I’m about halfway across the top, but the pattern repeats inverted on the bottom.

The top border.

I also have to finish outlining the pattern on the bottom. I started it, and I’m hoping it gets better. It uses a lot of half-stitches and they’re a little hard to follow. Also it doesn’t make the design pop as much as I thought it would, but it might be because it’s not finished.

Here are a few close-ups of some of the finished work. I’m pretty certain I can finish this in the next week. After that I’ve sworn I’m going to take a week or two hiatus before starting another project, but it seems like the second I finish one I start another, so we’ll see. Until then!

I am still slogging along with this beast, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

I took a slight detour and worked on another mini project for part of the week. I finished it and I’ll post pictures next week. I made it for a friend and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. I also successfully made last week’s birthday castle into a card using a lot of double-sided tape and a few pins (thanks for the suggestion Cross Stitch TV!)

It was actually a lot easier to mount than I thought it would be.

Finished birthday card

As for Mirabelle, I am too lazy to remove her from her snap-frame, so the edges are cut off in the photos, but I managed to work up the left side with the peach border and run it alllllll the way across the top. The awkward size of the frame—11×17 means I’ve literally stitched upside down and backwards to try and work comfortably. At least the project is making me feel like super woman.

Where I am in my quest to finish the top border.

The border along the top isn’t quite as bad as I thought. With a few more X-Files episodes (yup, I’m rewatching the series while I stitch this) I think I could get it done.

The bottom work. The right side is smushed under the frame, but I got it all finished.

After that it’s just filling in the bottom, which is feeling more and more doable. I filled in all of the darker green, and all of the single vertical rows, so I have the big empty space where the flourishes of light green and light brown go and then just the solid brown and light green that flank the dark green. I’ve so got this. Hopefully by next week I’ll be doing the backstitch.

The end table my cross stitch took over.

That funky silver and black thread. It’s the one marked &block;

I haven’t even opened the backstitch diagram. I have no idea how much I have to do, but I know it has some intricate parts with a really interesting silver and black thread.

You know how I said last week that I was going to chug on until I finished Mirabelle? Well, almost immediately following thinking that, I thought how nice it would be to have a shift in perspective and a little break. So I made a birthday card. It took about 2 days, and it was nice not doing completely straight stitches for those two days.

We’re sorry, but your birthday is in another castle…or something.

I’ve never made a card before, and I’m not quite sure how to put it together, or what to say on the inside, but I loved all the pretty beads. I regret that I miscounted the text and most of it is 1 square too low. It would have left ugly holes if I took it out, so I left it. I don’t think it’s really noticeable unless I tell you. 😉 The pattern is from world of cross stitch magazine, which I frequently buy digitally (OMG a print subscription to the states is expensive!) If you’re interested in the pattern I also found it on the designer’s Etsy shop. She makes some lovely whimsical designs.

The castle was stitched on hand-dyed evenweave. I’ve never worked with evenweave before, and while it wasn’t that difficult to stitch on, counting on it—since you work across two holes for each stitch—was absolutely horrendous. It was also my first time working with Kreinik blending filament. I like metallic thread, and it wasn’t terribly difficult. I just had to stitch a little slower and use short lengths. The hardest part was threading the needle.

After my brief sojourn into castles and beads I returned to Mirabelle if not exactly renewed, at least determined. I finished up a lot of the bottom left hand side, and then decided to tackle the peach border on the right. Originally I was going to perform the miraculous task of counting alllll the way to the top and working my way down. That’s just how I stitch: top to bottom, left to right. But I decided that was rather narrow minded and so I stitched bottom to top and finally reached the top. So now I’ve reached all four borders. Yay!

Mirabelle’s state of completion as of 4/8/2015

I expect to continue working on the bottom right side and work my way toward the middle, and then try and finish up the top left peach border. The part across the very top will be quite monotonous and I’m not looking forward to that, but I have to work up on the left to do even start that.

The bottom is filling in! On the left at least.

Here’s hoping I’ll be done in the next two weeks. I have carousel horses to stitch!

I always feel like I’m not getting anything done, so I’m hoping these posts will illustrate the contrary. I’m still working away on the bottom part of the piece. I’m dreading doing the border around the top and sides because I have to count so much to get there which means a high probability of an error, so for the moment I’m ignoring that and just working wherever I feel like on the bottom.

Excuse the pictures. I am without a phone, so they were taken with my iPad and they’re a little washed out and not very sharp. Maybe next week I’ll break out a real camera or test out the camera on the iPhone 6 that should be arriving soon.

The entire cross stitch of “If Only” to date.

I was trying to finish the bottom left corner. For this project I purchased a Q-Snap style frame (though an off-brand because my craft store didn’t carry the “real” brand). I’ve never worked with one before and, while I like it because you can get great tension, I find that I often get the cross stitch into it crooked. The size of this piece is such that an 11 x 17 inch Q-Snap (off brand) frame gets part of the stitched-piece pinched in it. So I was trying to finish the left hand side so that I could set it in and forget it for a while and maybe finish the right side so it doesn’t matter if either side gets pinched a bit (I put felt in between the plastic and the stitching). I think the real brand makes a 1-inch extender which would be perfect. Since I have 2 more projects this size I intend to do it may be worth looking into.

Close-Up of the area I worked this week.

I desperately want to take a break from this and start on a little carousel horse, but I’m afraid if I switch projects I won’t pick this one up again, so expect to see more brown and green filled in next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to fill in the band and maybe a bit of the right side. Any progress is good progress in my book.